Only Google Sent Me A Christmas Card This Year

Because I'm not already media saturated Google decided to quit edit my uploaded photos into a slide show and even added music. This kind of creeps me out because I know a person did not actually compile this slide show, so it was all a computer browsing my photos of Alligator swamp lizards in the high Chisos Mountains and Santa Elena canyon and my endless maintenance of my van. This is interesting because I've seen all and shared most of these photos but what's depressing are the photos and memories that Google is not aware of and thus virtually don't exist. You would think that watching this slideshow that you are witnessing my year in review but there were many pivotal events that I could not write about nor photograph as they were emotionally personal. I remember crossing the border into Mexico from Texas and giving spare change to a man with a club foot. Many people are bilingual near the border and we discussed my van. That incident is not in this slideshow. Nor is the 60 amp fuse that I blew because I didn't wrap a wire splice with enough electrical tape.

So this is the generic Oggy's 2014 Review as compiled by a loveless computer. It's incomplete, and yet, it's something.

Thinking Outside the Gridiron

This won't happen any time soon but as an example of a non-intuitive approach to problem solving I have a theory that the way to make pro football more safe is to double the schedule and have teams play at least twice a week. Maybe even three times a week. Instead of 16 games, the schedule would be 48 games long in the same time period from Sept to January. My theory is that like basketball and baseball which have 82 and 160 games respectively, the NFL players will pace themselves, the physical nature of the hits will have to be turned down. Every week you can decide to play utterly fatigued because you went all out during the last game, or you pace yourself, like NBA and MLB players. The reason the NFL is so violent is because the players have 6 days to lift weights, replenish their energy and they know they will have 6 days off after the game so they give 100%. This makes for a high impact/energy game but it's clearly too violent even for the taste of the owners as more and more rules are being made to protect players. Well, what the fuck? The rules aren't working because it's rarely a dirty hit that causes the injury and the hits that get the flag aren't the ones that cause injury. The extreme nature of the game has not changed at all because the players themselves have no incentive to go easy. The only way to give them an incentive is by punishing them with more games so they physically can not be as violent and careless because they know in three days they have to do it all over again. That is exactly how MLB and NBA get through their seasons, they pace themselves. The teams that don't pace themselves are without key players late in the season.

Bordering On Madness

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Songwriting Masterclass

This is the stuff that makes me smile. If loving the band Bread is wrong then I don't want to be right. James Griffin was a strong songwriter and singer with Bread but David Gates got the spotlight. It's sometimes hard to tell which high alto singer is Gates or Griffin. This is a tune Bread released but the studio version is too complicated with some kind of synthesized horn sound ruining the simplicity. I like this song even though it blatantly and repeatedly misuses the word "just", which is my pet grammar peeve, but I feel in lyrics it is permissible. It's also permissible as long as you are wearing leather pants* and a denim shirt with embroidered flowers and playing a grand piano and can sing the shit out a song like Griffin.  I like Jackson Browne's solo stuff too but they are probably pressured into a production room because there's more money in a band. Griffin flubs the very last piano note so you know it's real. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters by Elton John, and For A Dancer by Jackson Browne are high on my list of excellence. In Your Eyes by Billy Squire is up there too so Rock can be represented.

*There is another video of Griffin's set on The Old Grey Whistle Test program and he's wearing shiny black leather rocker pants.

Catching Up

Seriously Large monastery somewhere in a place no tourists visit.

Leaving Atlixco was unnecessary and probably foolish. It's paradise on earth. But my goal was to write my Santa Cruz epic novel and that floundered amid my punditry and online wars with other pundits....a failing I blame on my moral weakness.